RAM Upgrade?

I have a AMD FX-8120 @ 4.5ghz with 2x4gb of budget kingston 1600mhz ram on an Gigabyte 990fxa-ud3. I was planning on upgrading the ram because it seems sluggish in crysis, metro, and farcry 3. Down to less then 20 fps in fast scenes. For gpu im using 2 radeon hd 6870s in crossfire on a brand new windows 7 ultimate install on a kingston 3k 120gb ssd.So im wondering if my ram is bottlenecking my pc or even faulty. i have the clock preset to 1600mhz in my bios but when i choose a custom profile and have it set to 1599 (multiplier wont land right on 1600) windows wont boot, i will run a memtest but either way is the ram at fault here? and what ram should i have to be able to keep up with everything else? any feedback much appreciated!

In my opinion I don't think it's the ram. I'll put my money on those 6870s, how much VRAM do they have individually?

The RAM is not your problem. Your corssfire 6870s are either not up to par with the settings you're trying to run or have issues getting crossfire to actually turn on or scale properly. Make sure your drivers are updated. And your RAM probably causes errors booting when setting to 1600~ since your Timings and/or voltage could be wrong for the rated speed. Make sure you set those correctly in your BIOS; check the specs on your memory from the sticker on them or the package they came in. Or you could accidentally be, depending on how your BIOS is layed out, trying to run your ram at 1600X2 speed (3200). Which would definitely not work since the base clock rate of DDR1600 memory is actually 800mhz. DDR stands for Double Data Rate for a reason.

Not expecting a fast reply, so I'll get to my point. If those 6870s are 1GB cards that is most likely causing it. 1GB cards are getting a bit dated and games like those I believe are requiring a bit more than 1GB.

yea they are pushing two years now but it lists 2gigs of ddr5 dedicated video ram with 5.8gb total in the windows 7 spec but yes they are 1gb 134gbps 256 bit 1120 stream processors 900mhz core and 4200mhz mem clocks. For the ram the voltage and clock setting are at stock settings 1.5 and 1600, i dont get any video if i go any higher. what kind of gpu should get me 40-60fps in more demanding games? and if i went that route would my ram still suffice?

And as far as drivers the whole reason its a fresh windows install is because that AMD vision is so touchy. i did a brand new install only installed important updated then did the catalyst drivers and the rest of the windows updates, a few games and movie/music programs and thats it. its a very clean install. I have crossfire enabled but thats the only options it gives me other then the overclock which is on defult. Also i dont know if its related at all but windows aero doesnt start when the computer wakes up from sleep, i have to restart the pc.

 

You're best bet is a 7870 for price to proformance. I can't say exactly what FPS it would get you in those games, but I can assure you it'd be satisfactory.

And yes, 8GBs of even budget 1600mhz ram should keep you going just fine. I'm running 8GBs of budget Crucial 1600mhz ram in my i7/6950 2GB system and everything runs like a champ over here. Honestly I'm not worried about upgrading ram in till DDR4 becomes the standard.

i could get an msi 660 ti for a couple extra bucks more then the 7870 but either card doesnt seem like much of an upgade as far as specs. plus the 79xx series comes with crysis 3 and bioshock infinity. but im very skeptical on the performance benifits because the 6870 is only a few bucks less then the 7870 and the comparison here cf smokes the single 7870

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=661&card2=677

Well I ended up getting new ram and im running crysis 3 on max 30 fps